Every time you get in your car and press on the gas pedal
you are adding to the pile on that is climate change. Gas burning is in the top
three leading causes of climate change. Not only that but last year America
imported 20% of its oil from the Middle East. There are quite a few groups in
the Middle East that don't have our best interests in mind and oil helps to
fund them.
The simple solution is to stop driving so much. Easy to say,
isn't it? If you live in a large metropolitan area this could be easy. A lot of
the things you need could be within walking distance and the next best option
is public transportation. If you are in better shape and are careful you can
get a used bike pretty cheap on craigslist.
If you live in a more rural area, like I do, then that
option is a little more difficult. We can walk to a few things. There is a
store that is only about 30 minutes away (that's 30 minutes one way and 30
back). Not terrible but still quite a jaunt, especially if you have some cold
groceries. There is a Subway close by so, like Jared, we can walk there and get
some low fat sandwiches. But getting to and from our jobs poses another
problem.
Public transport won't work for us either as it would take
several hours for us to travel a trip of only a few moments by car. In fact it
takes almost as long to walk as it does to ride the bus to our respective
places of employment. I find this fact highly unfortunate because I would love
some extra time to squeeze in some reading but the amount of time I would lose
would negatively affect my quality of life. It is nice to have the option if
necessary.
So moving on to biking. Unfortunately biking isn't highly
thought of in my area and there are very few bike lanes for travel. There are
plenty of signs to share the road but plenty of terrible drivers texting and
checking facebook that make me weary of biking on the road itself. I have been
trying to map out a safe path to bike to work. But my girlfriend works in Ohio
and would not be able to get there by bike.
So our last option is to use automobiles. Since she drives
quite a bit, we began to replace her car (a 2000 Camry that was no longer
getting great gas mileage) with a hybrid. Ideally we would want an all electric
car but that is not feasible for two reasons: we live in a townhouse with
shared parking and would have trouble charging it and if we charged it with our
current electric provider we would be charging the car on almost pure coal. So
a hybrid was our answer.
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| photo from wikipedia |
Once we had a few bills paid down we began saving
specifically for a used hybrid. We went to various dealerships and test-drove a
few to find the one she wanted most. We settled on a 2010 Toyota Prius for a
few reasons. The first one, she really liked it. If you are going to spend a
large amount of money on anything make sure that you like it quite a bit, I
mean bordering on love. Also it is more aerodynamically designed, some of the
interior is made of plant plastic versus petroleum plastic, and by time we pay
it off it will still be fairly new. As we were saving we kept checking how much
they were going for at various places. We had a set minimum in mind to save for
but I had a lower minimum in the back of my head if something came up and we had
to move earlier on it.
Something came up.
The Camry has been a good little car for some time. It was
coming up on 200,000 miles on the engine but we thought it could hold out
between 25,000 and 50,000 more. It couldn’t. It started to have more and more
problems and the cost of repairing them was going up. We fell on plan B and
took the plunge.
We decided we were going to buy a car from Carmax. First we
are buying used which is greener than buying new. We also like their business
style. There is no haggling over price and most of their cars come with some
sort of guarantee. We were able to check through their national database and
pick the car we wanted. They delivered the car and we had no trouble getting
what we wanted. I highly recommend using them for your next car as I plan to.
So what is the car like? Quiet. Does it live up to its
advertised miles per gallon? Sort of. You can get the MPG advertised but you
really have to watch how you drive. It has some amazing displays that give you
real time feedback on what you are doing. Is it real? Yes. I did some math
using miles traveled and the amount of gas we put in it and she goes between
46-50 MPG. A huge improvement over the Camry and it's better than most cars out
there.
So why is this not a good solution for climate change? We
are still addicted to driving as a country and not everyone can afford hybrids
or think they can't. If we are still falling back on our bad habits we are only
making a small step forward instead of a huge one that we could be. So a better
solution would be better bike paths/roads. More efficient public transport with
greater reach in cities. High-speed rail could take quite a few trucks off the
road and all the diesel that they burn.
Pipe dreams? Maybe, but enough people get behind these ideas
they can start being implemented. It starts with one person trying to change. Join
me and then there will be two.
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